I started out strongly with the blogging.  I like to write and always incorporate reflection into my activities and days…but have a tendency to do these reflections informally.  For some reason, I have not done a good job keeping up with the blogs.  I know that formalizing and recording the reflection is a good idea.  I hope to keep up with some sort of blogs/written reflection activity in the future because it does help me focus and it helps me to trace the development of my thoughts over time.

I am a bit sad to be writing this particular blog past.  I know that I will always be a Kenan Fellow and I will continue to be active in the cohort.  I missed the banquet – stupid broken ankle – and I missed seeing my friends.  I have found this experience to be invigorating and and invaluable.  Meeting everyone involved, attending the conferences, learning the technologies have all added so much to my abilities.  My new relationship with Dr. Muddiman and his team at NC State has been awesome.  I will be attending a national conference in June with the team and then working with them again this summer.  Just the chance to do research, after being in the classroom for 20 years, is just such an exciting opportunity that it is hard to put into words.  I know that the curriculum that I have developed for my students based on my experiences has been challenging for them, but I think that has been a good thing.  I hope to continue my experiences with both the Kenan Fellows and NC State going forward for many years.

I’m a bit behind here – been a tough new year.  Got severely sick in January, recovered from that and broke my ankle in February, had surgery in May.  Been difficult to keep up with anything.

I was disappointed that my cooperating mentor didn’t get a chance to come speak to my students this semester.  I broke my ankle two days before he was supposed to visit and school got canceled on the scheduled day anyways.  He still actually volunteered to come (even though I wouldn’t be there), but that wasn’t ok with my principal.

My missing a month has hurt my developed curriculum a bit – since it’s mostly built as an extensional project, I have lost too much time to talk about it with my students.  I did start it earlier this semester and that proved to be a good decision.  I will have to reserve further judgement until the actual projects come in (second week of May).

I really enjoyed developing the curriculum.  The biggest challenge as I see it is simply that the vast majority of the concepts related to my Kenan externship are perhaps a bit too advanced for my students.  If I was still teaching AP Chem or IB Chem II like I did at my last school, I think that I might do a bit more with it.

I am excited that Dr. Muddiman, my mentor, has hired me back to work in his lab at NC State this summer.  I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, but will start the summer off by traveling to St. Louis for the American Mass Spectrometry Association conference.

Just because of the future tone of this post, let me say first that every other aspect of my Kenan experience has been awesome (my externship – which I think I will be continuing this summer (Dr. Muddiman has offered me a job, the conferences, the camaraderie, the information, etc.).  That said, I was excited when I learned we were also going to receive a tablet as part of the fellowship.  I have an iPad that I love, but I’ve been a PC guy forever and there are certain limitations that the iPads have that I thought the Lenovo’s wouldn’t.

Unfortunately, the Lenovo tablets turned out to be a disappointment.  While I didn’t have as many issues as some of my cohorts (I know of almost 20 people whose initial tablets wouldn’t even turn on), I got off to a bad start when the Microsoft Office download we received didn’t work.  It took about 4 hours to troubleshoot that process, which seems like an inordinate amount of time (especially now that I realize after 8 months that I’ve never used the software).  I’ve had problems with it turning on (there’s a trick with hitting a button a couple of times, then holding it for 30 seconds, then plugging in the charger, then holding the button again…wow, that’s intuitive, isn’t it?) and the functionality once it’s on leaves a lot to be desired.  I know that I wasn’t alone in my frustrations as most of the fellows just didn’t use the technology.  If I hadn’t gotten a computer assigned to me during my externship, I might have had a much more difficult time.

There are other problems with the tablets that I’m not discussing here, so overall I don’t suggest their use in the future – maybe this was a bad batch.  I know that I’ve talked to some people who love their Lenovo laptops, so maybe their laptops are better.  I do suggest that if Kenan fellows are given something like this in the future, it would probably be a good idea to do a training session right off the bat.  I’m pretty savvy when it comes to technology, but I would have found that helpful.

My Kenan lesson for the first semester went fairly well, as I mentioned in my last post.  The feedback that I got from Craig and Pam Lovin helped me modify a few things.  The feedback I got from my students is also informing some changes in how I am handling the lesson this semester.  I am hoping that it goes a bit smoother, but I was still pleased with the overall results from last term.  I have an odd number in each class I’m teaching this semester, so I will be on at least one team in each class, which should be fun!

I missed a post in December – my mother was struggling after an extended hospital stay and I was trying to wrap up the semester – just forgot to post…but I was working on my Kenan curriculum as my first student projects were due before exams.

The main part of my Kenan lesson plan was an extension project that my students completed in teams of four.  Right off the bat there were some issues as I didn’t have any classes where my student population was divisible by four.  I ended up being a team member on several teams, which I enjoyed quite a bit and I think that I will continue to participate in this way – perhaps even more so (it gives me a different perspective into how my students are thinking and working).

The first set of projects that I graded were awesome!  Unfortunately, they were also the best of all of the projects that I graded.  A couple of students did not do their parts.  I knew about these situations ahead of time and tried to ensure that in the end that they completed what they needed to.  Neither did – one was a complete surprise being in this situation and I’m still waiting to see if I can determine why it happened (the other student was not a surprise).

The students had to do reflections as part of their projects and I think that they were pretty honest about how things went.  I ended up getting some of the normal platitudes (“I really learned a lot from this project”) and I hope they were truthful with those, but I also had several students express possible new career interests.

I also received several good ideas for tweaking the lesson plans – particularly the project.  Some students found the project a bit overwhelming – especially the rubrics.  While I’m not sure I can decrease the amount of rubrics, I know that I can spend more time addressing them.  One student told me that the project newsletter (the description of the project) was too colorful and therefore distracting.  It is busy, I admit, but I don’t see changing that aspect until I get some more feedback along those lines.

Most of the suggestions were along the line of the necessity of more time and more organization.  I will be starting the lesson plan earlier this semester and giving students more time on the project.  I will also be assigning more deadlines (or “check-in” assignments) so I can better spot potential trouble and make suggestions.  I will also be allotting some time each week to see if there are any questions or concerns.  Additionally, since many students submitted electronic files this past semester, I will be creating shared group folders through Google docs that the students can use to organize, communicate, and edit each others’ work through more effectively (these folders should also allow me to “peek” in a bit more to check on progress informally).

Overall, I am definitely pleased with how the first run-through went and I’m excited to implement the changes I’ve listed.  My mentor is already on board to come back this second semester and I’m working to get at least one other guest speaker to come as well.

I think that the Mentor partnership aspect of the Kenan Fellowship is extremely valuable.  I know that I get fixed in the cocoon of my school much of the time and it’s really important to be spreading out and getting in touch with experts – we have to be “out there” to bring back real-world issues to our students.  My partnership with Dr. Dave Muddiman and his team at NCSU has been so helpful and eye-opening.  The work I did this past summer and just being part of a team that could sit around and talk about these complex investigations gave me so much “ammunition” to bring back to my class.

I do think it’s a two-way street, as well.  I know that several members of Dr. Muddiman’s team used the Kenan relationship in grant proposals that they were awarded.  Dr. Muddiman also mentioned to me in a recent visit that the lesson plans that I developed as a part of my experience helped him get some funding for new equipment from NC State.  He told me that the lesson plan he shared helped convey the importance of what he and his team do, and it helped convince some others that he is working to share that message to a broader community.  He also offered me a job next summer – which I was flattered and eager to accept.

I haven’t posted a blog recently.  I’ve been busy with lots of different things – school, taking several courses, applying for the Albert Einstein Fellowship, my mother has been in the hospital – life seems to get overrun at times.  My Kenan lesson plan is in full effect in my two chemistry classes.  Dr. Muddiman came and introduced the field of analytical chemistry to my students in October and they have been working on their extension projects.  I gave them a few days to work when I was out with my mother, and I am anxious to see how they turn out.  Students turned in some rough drafts and research last week and it looks like they have some good ideas…it also looks like they have a long way to go in some areas.

I have just completed a couple of MOOCs through Coursera.  The one I thought was phenomenal as “What Future for Education?”  It was conducted through the University of London and was extremely informative.  I particularly liked interacting with teachers throughout the world and discussing different situations and ideas about education.  I never thought I would have a chance to have a discussion with a Siberian teacher (things are not going well for teachers in Siberia).  I also finished reading a book called “A Mind for Numbers” by Barbara Oakley which is geared toward using our understanding of neuroscience to help people become more effective learners (especially in math and science).  The book was a supplemental resources for a MOOC I took a few months back called “Learning How to Learn.”  I would strongly suggest both of those courses to fellow educators.

I continue to appreciate my experiences with the other Kenan Fellows.  About 10 of us are taking the Seize the Data class through NCCAT and last night we had our first class chat.  I can’t believe with all of the years of experience I have that I never thought to collect data in some of the ways that have been suggested by the course and by my classmates.  I’m excited to start doing this and analyzing it in a more formalized way and hopefully bring much of what I’ve learned (and what I’m still learning) to my school and fellow teachers.

I’m not exactly sure what we’re supposed to be posting on with this particular blog post…obviously social media, but I don’t know whether we’re supposed to be focusing our use of it or what we think about it.  My use of social media is primarily through the Moodle courses that my students use.  They participate in forums and wikis through Moodle.  I have started using Remind this year, although I guess that doesn’t really qualify as social media.  Edmodo would be more along the lines of what is meant by that and while I have been signed up for Edmodo for a couple of years, I have never actively used it with my classes.  I have to be honest in that I find it jumbled.  I have the same issues with Facebook, so it’s not an isolated complaint.  I have tried to turn some of my students onto the educational opportunities available through tumblr, since I am working for a nonprofit called SciNote which posts science articles and answers to questions on it.

I guess all of this is to say that I don’t use social media as much as I should.  I’ve struggled with some technology issues this year as I don’t even usually have internet access in my classroom.  I’m looking forward to reading some of the other blogs on this particular topic to see if I can find some inspiration to start incorporating more social media aspects into my classes.